Even though most Nobel Peace Prize laureates went on to
become nation-building peacemakers, is Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi fast becoming
the exception?
By: Ringo Bones
During the last two decades of the 20th Century,
many of us assumed that Nobel Peace Prize laureates – like South Africa’s
Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu – are nation-building peacemakers.
But for those of us old enough to remember those good old days where Nobel
Peace Prize laureates went on to do great things within the path of peace that
are still of geopolitical importance, it seems that the recent Myanmar Rohingya
Muslim refugee crisis has tarnished everyone’s expectations of Aung San Suu Kyi
– who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize back in 1991 – and was supposedly would
have transitioned Myanmar into a civilian run democracy since her appointment
as State Counselor (a position akin to a Prime Minister) just like what Mandela
and Tutu had done to South Africa by ending Apartheid peacefully.
For those closely following her political career since the
end of her house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi’s “silence” over the plight of the
Rohingya Muslim minorities in Myanmar might be explained due to her need to
gain support from the majority Bamar ethnicity as she was in the middle of a
general election campaign back in 2015. But as the violence committed against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims and their exodus into neighboring Bangladesh recently got
worse and worse and with video evidence reminiscent of the notorious ethnic cleansing
incidences of the Balkans back in the mid 1990s, Suu Kyi’s recent UN General
Assembly speech which was tinged with “both sides are to blame” Trumpisms had
made many to question if she still deserves her Nobel Peace Prize or might the
Nobel Committee be allowed to strip her of her prized accolade due to her adopting
an ineffectual stance when it comes to the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya
Muslims.
